By Maureen Bowden

Extract from ‘The Human Chronicles’; Geek-bot History Archives:

Ivor Eames-Jones was born in the year 1990. He left school at sixteen, rebellious, undisciplined and cleverer than anyone in the teaching profession who had attempted to educate him. He spent two years living on the proceeds of petty crime and observing the gaming machines in holiday resort casinos. He learned how their mechanical minds worked, and how to beat them. By the time he was thirty he’d made enough money to live comfortably without doing a day’s work for the rest of his life.

He enrolled with the Open University and studied artificial intelligence. Ten years later he was an eminent scientist and acknowledged genius, with a swarm of androids he’d designed, programmed with intelligence equal to his own, and built in his image. They became known as the geek-bots. The great minds of the scientific world worshipped him, were terrified of him, or ignored him, while they concentrated on trying in vain to save the planet, damaged by centuries of abuse.

The geek-bots were unaffected by climate change, pollution and pandemics. They had the ability to make others identical to themselves, or different in any way they wished. Humans had become surplus to requirements. They could be left to die.

When beleaguered flesh and blood beings realised that machines were now the dominant species they formed angry mobs that stormed through the cities, rioting, looting and making a lot of noise. The geek-bots responded by building the killer-bots: brute force but little intelligence, programmed only to destroy. It was a mistake. The killer-bots killed every human they could find, then they demolished the geek-bots, after which they demolished each other. Then there were none. Almost.

In the year 2120, shortly before the end of the killer-bot rampages, a dying human gave a family heirloom to his sixteen-year-old son. The gadget was a torch that never needed recharging. It was powered by sound-waves. Any sound: a whistle, a sigh, the patter of acid rain or the crash of oceanic waves depositing non-biodegradable waste on a rocky shoreline, was enough to keep the light shining for many nights. It had been passed down through generations by the descendants of its inventor, Ivor Eames-Jones.

End of extract.

#

In the dusk of a dismal day, Boy Torchlight ran along a narrow backstreet in Llandelio, a derelict town that nestled close to the Cambrian Mountains in the land of Wales. He glanced over his shoulder at the battalion of killer-bots. They were gaining on him. He ran faster, until a second battalion lurched into view, approaching from the other end of the street. Great, he thought. Probably the last human alive and I’m about to be squashed to pulp between two murderous hordes of metal malware.

He heard the creak of an opening door from one of the abandoned shops. A girl of about his age standing in the doorway beckoned to him. “Get in here. Quick.”

He leaped inside. She bolted the door behind them, and said, “Come on, Follow me.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name’s Violet. You’re Boy Torchlight, right?”

“Right. How did you know?”

She shrugged. “Who else could you be?” She led him into a backroom. The fungus-infested walls emitted an acrid smell that stung his nostrils.

After, rolling aside the rotting carpet Violet placed her palm on a floor-tile. It swung open, revealing a cellar staircase. “Switch on your torch,” she said. “It’s dark down there.”

He picked up the sack he’d been carrying, slung it over his shoulder, shone his torch ahead of them and followed her onto the worm-riddled wooden stairs. The tile clicked back into place. “If the bots saw me come in here they’ll soon find that trapdoor and follow us,” he whispered.

“They’re not as clever as geek-bots, Boy, but if they do find it they can’t open it because it only responds to my handprint. You’re impressed, yes?”

He laughed. “Yes. Where are we going?”

“Through a labyrinth of tunnels dug out of the bedrock under the town. One of them leads to the cellar of an old farmhouse on the outskirts. I’ve been staying there with six geek-bots.”

“Geek-bots? My father told me the killers had destroyed them all.”

“Not quite, but they keep trying. Now shut up, Boy. I need to concentrate on finding my way. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Minotaur lurking down here and Ariadne’s lost the thread.”

After an hour or so they stopped to rest, and sat together on the tunnel floor. He looked at her in his torchlight. She was beautiful. He saw fierce intelligence in her strong features, her long dark hair hung in a single plait, and her black leggings and jacket were similar to his own: typical synthetic, bot-made clothing. There was a lot of it about and there was nobody left to wear it. “What were you doing in that shop, Violet?” he asked.

“Rescuing you, of course. I’d been on the lookout for killer-bots all day. I’d spotted them, and when I saw you going into the old warehouse earlier I knew you were at risk, so I hung around and kept track of you. Were you in there stocking up on nutrient packs?”

“Yes.” He held up the sack. “I’d run out but I have enough to sustain myself for years now. Do you need some?”

“No, thanks.”

After another hour trekking through the tunnels they emerged in the farmhouse cellar. Violet climbed the ladder to a trapdoor, laid her hand on it, winked at Boy, and said, “Open Sesame.” The trapdoor obliged and they climbed into a spacious, ancient but clean-smelling kitchen. Six geek-bots, designed to look like young men in their twenties, were sitting around a large antique oak table, playing with an equally antique pack of cards. Violet called to them, “Geeks, We have a guest. This is Boy Torchlight.”

The bots looked up from their card game. One of them said. “I’ll be Spokes-bot. Greetings, Boy. We thought you were probably dead by now.” He turned to Violet. “Any killers around?”

She nodded, pulling two extra chairs up to the table and gesturing to Boy to join her. “Two battalions, but Boy did us a favour. When I snatched him out of their grasp they were on a collision course, so they’ve probably annihilated each other by now and we can relax until the next lot show up.”

Spokes-bot turned back to Boy. “You’re welcome to stay here awhile, young human. We should be safe for a few days. Do you play poker?”

“Yes, but badly,” Boy said, “and thank you for offering your hospitality but I need to go back to the cave I’ve made my home. I have work to do.”

“What work is to be done? All any of us can do now is keep ourselves alive.”

Boy shook his head. “My species brought Earth to the point of death, but she still lives, and she can recover. I’ll help her to do it.”

“Do you have the means to repair her?”

“I can aid her to repair herself.”

“In that case you’re right. If you can undo the damage inflicted by your ancestors then you must go.” The bot turned to Violet, “Go with Boy and save yourself. We can’t hide forever. The killers will find us.”

She asked, “Why will I be any safer with him than with you?”

“He’ll keep himself safe because he has a purpose in staying alive. We don’t, and we’re tired of hiding.”

Boy said, “I can give you a purpose. Life will evolve in the oceans as it did before, and one day flesh and blood beings will inhabit the land again.” He took his torch from his jacket pocket and handed it to Spokes-bot. “Examine this gadget, learn how it draws its power from sound-waves, and find a way to pass that knowledge to the successors of humankind.”

“Why do you wish us to do that?”

If they can make use of sound-wave energy they may never need to mine fossil fuels and build power stations. No doubt they’ll still damage Earth in some ways but this will reduce that damage and keep her healthy for longer.”

Spokes-bot held the torch in front of his eyes. After a few minutes he handed it to another bot who did the same. They passed it around until all six had examined it and then they returned it to Boy. Spokes-bot said, “We’ve learned all that we need to know. Our bodies will corrode in time but before that happens we’ll build others like ourselves and so will they. When Earth produces an appropriate life-form, bots that resemble it, so will not appear threatening, will be built and will teach the new earth-beings how to harness sound-wave power. Maybe they will use it well.”

Boy said, “Can you ensure that the bots of that day are not mistaken for some kind of deities? That could lead to unfortunate situations.”

“We know. We’ve studied human history. It’s interesting but tragic, and it will not be repeated. The new beings will believe that the bots are merely a tribe who discovered sound-wave power first.”

Boy rose to his feet. “Thank you. I must leave now. I want to be back home in the mountains by dawn.”

Violet said, “You interest me. I’ll come with you.”

“I hoped you would.”

The sky was clear and the moon was full. He didn’t need his torch. They reached a silt-clogged river that smelled of toxic waste, sluggishly flowing through scrubland that loomed pallid and ghostly in the moonlight. “I know this place,” Violet said. “It’s the Cothi valley. There were once trees here. Brechfa Forest.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’ve been fairly well educated.”

He sighed. “Earth was beautiful then, in the time before the bots.”

She grabbed his arm. “Leave the bots out of it. They were producing synthetic nutrients to keep humans alive, and synthetic fabrics for their clothes, bedding and soft furnishings, while Mother Nature’s Silver Seed were making a bug’s turd of their own planet.” He heard the mockery in her voice. “Some songwriter or other called them that, back in the twentieth-century.”

He grinned. “His name was Neil Young. I too have been fairly well educated.”

She frowned. “Aren’t you angry with humans for what they did?”

He shook his head. “What’s the point? The people who did it are all dead. It’s up to me to help Earth to recover and I’ll start with Brechfa Forest.”

They reached the mountains as dawn was breaking and the rising sun was staining the clouds pink. He led her into his cave. A synthetic bedroll and a bundle of clothes were stashed against the rock wall. The only item of furniture was an ancient wooden chest, of the type in which linen was once stored. “What’s in there?” she asked.

He dumped his sack alongside the bedroll and lifted the lid of the chest. It contained hundreds of sealed packages. “Seeds of many species of trees and other vegetation,” he said. “Some plants grow from bulbs. I have those too. My family saved all they could find. I need to put them in the ground. Nature will do the rest.”

He sat in the cave’s entrance facing the sunrise, and beckoned her to join him. She sat beside him. He said, “In a future time a new race will evolve and populate the planet again, but in our time, maybe you and I could take a shortcut before then and produce some humans.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Boy. We can be companions but I can’t have babies.”

He looked into her strange violet eyes, and he touched her face, running his fingertips across her perfect skin. Too perfect. He understood. “You’re a bot.”

“Yes, and I can’t change what I am. What can I do?”

He smiled and took her hand. “You can help me to plant the trees.”

End